Description

Treasure Island, published in 1883, popularized the now familiar characters of pirates and brought them to rum-swilling life. When an old sailor named Billy Bones dies in the inn belonging to young Jim Hawkins’s parents, he leaves a greasy old map on which an “X” marks the spot where treasure is buried. Jim joins the crew of a ship in pursuit of Bones’s treasure, and on the seas meets up with Long John Silver, a peg-legged pirate who has infiltrated their ranks. Jim must survive mutinies and counter-mutinies, face hand-to-hand combat with drunken sailors, and outwit double-crossing thieves before the treasure can be his.

About the author

Born in Edinburgh in 1850, Robert Louis Stevenson remains one of English literature’s most translated authors, thanks to his relentless pacing and vividly realized characters. His tales of adventure helped define the genre, and introduced a level of nuance to children’s literature along with a rare and unique wit. Stevenson’s life was as colorful as his stories. He travelled extensively in Europe, the United States, and the South Seas, where he died in Samoa in 1894.

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Iain McLean I was made to read this book many years ago in school, but after watching the Robert Newton film version I thought I'd give it another go, it is a good read, but the ending is over far too quickly. The build up to the voyage takes a number of chapters as does the voyage and the adventure on the island, but from leaving the island to arriving back in England takes only a couple of paragraphs.

Bring The Classics To Life Series. These novels have been adapted into 10 short chapters that will excite the reluctant reader as well as the enthusiastic one. Let the Classics introduce Kipling, Stevenson, and H.G. Wells. Readers will embrace the notion of Crusoe's lonely reflections, the psychological reactions of a Civil War soldier at Chancellorsville, and the tragedy of the Jacobite Cause in 18th Century Scotland. Knowledge of Classics is a cultural necessity and these will improve fluency, vocabulary and comprehension through a high Interest / low readability format. Each eBookis divided into 10 short high quality illustrated chapters - Was written using McGraw-Hill's Core Vocabulary - Has been measured by the Fry Readability Formula - Defines and uses in context new vocabulary, prior to each chapter.

The narrator, James "Jim" Hawkins, is the young son of the owners of the Admiral Benbow Inn. An old drunken seaman named Billy Bones becomes a long-term lodger at the inn, only paying for about the first week of his stay. Jim quickly realizes that Bones is in hiding, and that he particularly dreads meeting an unidentified seafaring man with one leg. Some months later, Bones is visited by a mysterious sailor named Black Dog. Their meeting turns violent, Black Dog flees and Bones suffers a stroke. While Jim cares for him, Bones confesses that he was once the mate of a notorious late pirate, Captain Flint, and that his old crew-mates want Bones' sea chest. Some time later, another of Bones' crew mates, a blind man named Pew, appears at the inn and forces Jim to lead him to Bones. Pew gives Bones a paper. After Pew leaves, Bones opens the paper to discover it is marked with the Black Spot, a pirate summons, with the warning that he has until ten o'clock to meet their demands. Bones drops dead of apoplexy (in this context, a stroke) on the spot. Jim and his mother open Bones' sea chest to collect the amount due to them for Bones' room and board, but before they can count out the money that they are owed, they hear pirates approaching the inn and are forced to flee and hide, Jim taking with him a mysterious oilskin packet from the chest. The pirates, led by Pew, find the sea chest and the money, but are frustrated that there is no sign of "Flint's fist". Customs men approach and the pirates escape to their vessel, all except for Pew, who is accidentally run down and killed by the agents' horses....(Excerpt from Wikipedia)

Bubbling potions can be bad for your health! Just ask Dr. Jekyll. By day, he's a kind doctor. But by night, he's the merciless kill Mr. Hyde. And all because of a magic formula. Will anybody find out the horrible secret of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?

Vocabulary is a critical part of studying for the SATs. Memorizing words that are written on flashcards can be difficult because they are not put in the context of a sentence. Kaplan’s SAT Score-Raising Classics make learning SAT vocabulary words easier and more enjoyable for students. Classic novels that are taught throughout high school can now be read while learning vocabulary words that frequently appear on the SAT exam.

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In London, Gabriel John Utterson, a prosecutor, is on his weekly walk with his relative Richard Enfield, who proceeds to tell him of an encounter he had seen some months ago while coming home late at night from Cavendish Place. The tale describes a sinister figure named Edward Hyde who tramples a young girl, disappears into a door on the street, and re-emerges to pay off her relatives with 10 pounds in gold and a cheque signed by respectable gentleman Dr. Henry Jekyll (a client and friend of Utterson's) for 90 pounds. Jekyll had recently and suddenly changed his will to make Hyde the sole beneficiary. This development concerns and disturbs Utterson, who makes an effort to seek out Hyde. Utterson fears that Hyde is blackmailing Jekyll for his money. Upon finally managing to encounter Hyde, Hyde's ugliness, as if deformed, amazes Utterson. Although Utterson cannot say exactly how or why, Hyde provokes an instinctive feeling of revulsion in him. Much to Utterson's surprise, Hyde willingly offers Utterson his address. After one of Jekyll's dinner parties, Utterson stays behind to discuss the matter of Hyde with Jekyll. Utterson notices Jekyll turning pale, yet he assures Utterson that everything involving Hyde is in order and that he is to be left alone. A year passes uneventfully. One night, a servant girl witnesses Hyde beat a man to death with a heavy cane. The victim was MPSir Danvers Carew, who was also Utterson's client. The police, who suspect Hyde, contact Utterson. He leads the officers to Hyde's apartment, feeling a sense of foreboding amid the eerie weather (the morning is dark and wreathed in fog). When they arrive at the apartment, the murderer has vanished, but they find half of the cane (described as being made of a strong wood but broken due to the beating) left behind a door. It is revealed to have been given to Jekyll by Utterson. Shortly thereafter, Utterson again visits Jekyll, who now claims to have ended all relations with Hyde. Jekyll shows Utterson a note, allegedly written to Jekyll by Hyde, apologizing for the trouble that he has caused him and saying goodbye. That night, however, Utterson's clerk points out that Hyde’s handwriting bears a remarkable similarity to Jekyll's own. For a few months, Jekyll reverts to his former friendly and sociable manner, as if a weight has been lifted from his shoulders. Later, Jekyll suddenly starts refusing visitors, and Dr. Hastie Lanyon, a mutual acquaintance of Jekyll and Utterson, dies suddenly of shock after receiving information relating to Jekyll. Before his death, Lanyon gives Utterson a letter, with instructions that he should only open it after Jekyll's death or his disappearance. Utterson goes out walking with Enfield, and they see Jekyll at a window of his laboratory. The three men start conversing, but a look of horror suddenly comes over Jekyll's face, and he slams the window and disappears. Soon afterwards, Jekyll's butler, Mr. Poole, visits Utterson in a state of desperation and explains that Jekyll has secluded himself in his laboratory for several weeks. Utterson and Poole travel to Jekyll's house through empty, windswept, sinister streets. Once there, they find the servants huddled together in fear. They go to see the laboratory where they hear that the voice coming from inside is not the voice of Jekyll and the footsteps are light and not the heavy footsteps of the doctor. After arguing for a time, the two of them resolve to break into Jekyll's laboratory.Inside, they find the body of Hyde wearing Jekyll's clothes and apparently dead from suicide. They find also a letter from Jekyll to Utterson promising to explain the entire mystery. Utterson takes the document home, where he first reads Lanyon’s letter and then Jekyll's. The first reveals that Lanyon’s deterioration and eventual death resulted from the shock of seeing Hyde drinking a serum, or potion, and as a result of doing so, turning into Dr. Jekyll. The second letter explains that Jekyll, seeking to separate his good side from his darker impulses, discovered a way to transform himself periodically into a creature free of conscience, this being Hyde. The transformation was incomplete, however, in that it created a second, evil identity, but did not make the first identity purely good. At first, Jekyll reports that he delighted in becoming Hyde and rejoiced in the moral freedom that the creature possessed. Eventually, however, he found that he was turning into Hyde involuntarily in his sleep, even without taking the potion...(Excerpt from Wikipedia)

This Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Edition includes a glossary and reader?s notes to help the modern reader contend with Stevenson's language and themes.Originally published in 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson?s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde became an immediate sensation with the public, which was thoroughly fascinated by the book?s study of guilt, moral responsibility, and horror. Stevenson carefully weaves a detective story with the quest for human perfection gone awry to construct a tale that has haunted readers for more than a century.

"Backgrounds and Contexts" includes a wealth of materials on the tale's publication history as well as its relevance to Victorian culture. Twelve of Stevenson's letters from the years 1885-87 are excerpted, along with his essay "A Chapter on Dreams," in which he comments on the plot's origin. Ten contemporary responses--including those by Julia Wedgwood, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Henry James--illustrate Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde's initial reception. Stevenson's 1885 tale "Markheim," a precursor to Jekyll and Hyde and a window onto the Victorian sensation market, is reprinted in its entirety in this Norton Critical Edition. Karl Miller, Jenni Calder, and Judith Halberstam discuss literary genres central to Jekyll and Hyde. Four scientific essays--including one by Stephen Jay Gould--elucidate Victorian conceptions of atavism, multiple-personality disorder, narcotics addiction, and sexual aberration. Judith R. Walkowitz and Walter Houghton consider the implications of Victorian moral conformity and political disunity for society at large.

"Performance Adaptations" addresses--in writings by C. Alex Pinkston, Jr., Charles King, and Scott Allen Nollen--the many ways in which Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has been dramatized over more than a century and explores its status as a perpetually effective vehicle for changing psychological and social concerns. A checklist of major performance adaptions is provided, along with a sampler of publicity photos.

"Criticism" includes essays by G. K. Chesterton, Vladimir Nabokov, Peter K. Garrett, Patrick Brantlinger, and Katherine Linehan that center on the tale's major themes of morality, allegory, and self-alienation.

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